


Lower Chroma

by aurumstar (shieldivarius)



Series: FFXIVWrite 2020 [1]
Category: Final Fantasy XIV
Genre: Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Angst, Body Horror, F/M, Female Warrior of Light (Final Fantasy XIV), Patch 5.0: Shadowbringers Spoilers, Patch 5.3: Reflections in Crystal Spoilers, Prompt Fill, Tumblr: FFXIVwrite, Tumblr: FFXIVwrite2020, Unnamed Warrior of Light (Final Fantasy XIV)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-07
Updated: 2020-09-07
Packaged: 2021-03-07 02:20:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,518
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26345488
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/shieldivarius/pseuds/aurumstar
Summary: It was scarcely the first time since the sundering that he’d encountered a soul with a colour passing familiarity. It was, after all, his gift and his domain to see the truth of souls, regardless of the bodies they presented. Even fragmented, the dimmest hint of colour remained. Seven successful rejoinings, eight fourteenths of a soul later, and the layers of hue had nearly knit back together enough for the faintest reflection of an ancient.Emet-Selch remembers the truth of the Warrior of Light's soul.Fill for FFXIVwrite 2020 prompt "clinch."
Relationships: Azem/Solus zos Galvus | Emet-Selch
Series: FFXIVWrite 2020 [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1916263
Kudos: 15
Collections: #FFxivWrite2020 Final Fantasy 30 Day Writing Challenge





	Lower Chroma

**Author's Note:**

> CW in the tags: Body horror relating to the origin of Cubuses.

Twelve thousand years was an inconceivable amount of time for any soul that hadn’t lived through it. Immeasurable even in terms of the lifespans of the long-lived ancients, had their descendants lived to see it. Thousands upon thousands of generations, lost to time. Lost to ruin.

The heavy weight of exhaustion dogged his every step. The burden of eons dragged him down, pulled at his shoulders, changed his very posture, tried to return him to soil and dust and end this truly miserable existence and reclaim him once and for all.

But Lord Zodiark’s work remained undone, the world remained fragmented, and _His_ demands were paramount. There would be, could be, no rest until the work was complete.

He took what dim pleasures he could in the meantime. 

Some centuries—this century—that meant chasing the ghosts of the past. The long, forgotten past. Finally ceding to age and letting Solus’s body die had been all well and good, until he learned of the identity of the Warrior of Light who’d slowly grown to be a thorn in his Empire’s side. A woman with an overabundance of aether for a fragmented soul. A woman whose soul he’d laid eyes on and thought he recognized, but whose identity lay like a word on the tip of the tongue, forgotten.

So he _followed_ her, and willed the word to return. Willed himself to recall her name, so that he could go about his business and ensure the next successful rejoining. 

It was scarcely the first time since the sundering that he’d encountered a soul with a colour passing familiarity. It was, after all, his gift and his domain to see the truth of souls, regardless of the bodies they presented. Even fragmented, the dimmest hint of colour remained. Seven successful rejoinings, eight fourteenths of a soul later, and the layers of hue had nearly knit back together enough for the faintest reflection of an ancient. 

No doubt he failed to recognize the true colour for what it was because of the corrupted Light she’d taken in. Another point of interest, that. Perhaps it was that Light mixing with the hue of her soul that fooled him into thinking her familiar, changed the chroma _just so_ to make his view of her aether into something it wasn’t. Not an ancient, not someone he’d known long, long ago, but instead another pitiful fragment of a small life.

Still, her resistance to the Light’s corruption was a point of interest even if he didn’t know her.

So he followed her, enjoyed their exchanges, and doled out in pieces and treats hints of ‘the way things were’ until she started _reminding_ him of someone, beyond even that damned colour.

Who?

When he couldn’t stand questioning his own memory for a moment longer, he’d retreat to his recreated Amaurot for a break. Walk the lane ways, the sweeping roads, and create a shade of another acquaintance. Each time, he’d hold the hue of her soul in his mind and try to recreate that person. A hint of personality here, a dialectal quirk there, and always the identical, ill-defined physical form, robe and generic white mask, because he knew—knew—he had failed again. 

A snap of his fingers and the mistake would flash into a robed Amaurotine and then melt again before his eyes, morphing into a clump of oozing ill-formed aether that lashed out if he got too close to it. 

He was forming a collection of them. 

Who was this _damn_ adventurer? Why did she put an _ache_ in his chest?

In his need to affirm her identity he created another soul, one whose colour he could picture without needing to work nearly as hard. Perhaps by focusing on someone who had shared in his gift, he could figure out who she had been. Hythlodaeus knew souls, perhaps even better than Emet-Selch had ever been able to. He would recognize her for who she had been, if indeed she had been anyone. 

He slipped again in Hythlo’s creation, narrowly avoiding turning his old friend—his mind tripped over the word, the emotion he thought belonged there turning up empty—into a Cubus, and making him self-aware instead.

He avoided Hythlo’s old Amaurotine haunts after that.

But the failure—for creating a self-aware shade was definitely failure—gave him an inkling of whose colour he was straining to remember.

_The Fourteenth._

He drew the constellation crystal from his pocket, eyed its colour carefully. It had weighed heavily on his person for millennia after he’d created it, but at some point he’d forgotten the burden, or perhaps he’d absorbed it into the weight of everything else. 

That orange. The blinding colour of the sun. The colour of her soul.

He’d spent so damn long trying to hold the colour in his mind’s eye, to create a shade, and he’d been off every time. Perhaps if he held the colour up next to the Warrior, the colours would match. 

He clenched the crystal tight in his hand, pressed his fist to his forehead. Flashes of memories long forgotten played in snippets through his mind. 

_Azem, Azem._

Standing in his way now as she had then. Yes, it fit. 

But if she were Azem’s sundered soul, come to stand in his way, why did he _ache_ to look at her? That didn’t fit with the _anger_ he’d harboured at her refusal to aid their summoning of Zodiark. It didn’t fit the _betrayal_ he’d felt when she’d walked away.

 _“My dearest friend.”_ The words he’d forever frozen in time when he’d created the stone.

Crystal in his hand, the colour of Azem’s soul in his mind’s eye, Emet-Selch stood in the centre of the Macarenses Angle and tried to picture her. In office she’d worn a black mask, and if he thought past the anger, he could picture beneath it the playful curve to her lips. Rich, warm laughter when she was delighted. A propensity for getting herself into trouble, and an independent streak a malm wide.

His hand trembled as he tried to pull together the aether to recreate her. 

The ache in his chest built as his mind raced to mend together his fragmented memories of her and craft them into something tangible. The same feeling that he was missing something niggled at the back of his mind, if he could just _see_ her, have her stand before him, even if she wasn’t aware enough to talk to him, he was certain whatever was missing would spring to mind.

A sparkle in her eye—what colour had her eyes been, and why did he have a memory of her face close enough to see the freckles on her cheeks?

_This isn’t important. This is a distraction, a detour from Lord Zodiark’s wishes._

He ignored the reminder, pushed back on the looming dominance of Zodiark’s will over his own. The rejoining was continuing at pace. A moment of amusement while he recreated Azem’s shade certainly wasn’t going to halt millennia of progress. 

He twisted his wrist, swirling the aether around his hand, and the woman sprang to life in front of him. More than a shade, he’d managed to recreate her in her entirely. Long silver hair tinged with a hint of burnished copper—a hint of the sun—that flowed down her back, laughing green eyes lined in black that she’d always done up despite having them hidden behind her mask. 

She smiled at him. “Hades?”

His breath caught, and the burden of the memories staggered him as they poured in. _Azem, Azem,_ his _soulmate._ They’d been joined once. They'd worked so closely together despite the frequent absences of her office that their aethers had begun to merge when they were together—as ancient, whole souls were wont to do.

Emet-Selch clenched his fists, bowed his head, found it impossible to look at the radiance of the woman he’d created.

The memory of her lips pressing against his, love swelling in his chest. For a moment he rode it, the emotion so foreign, so forgotten, that it overwhelmed him and tears spilled down his cheeks. The memory of their souls knitted together, partners in everything, giving sense to his automatic shunning of working in partners as Ascians. 

He whispered her name, and it was sweet on his lips. Her true name, lost to time.

Reached out to her, because she was holding out her hand to him. 

He touched her, just brushed the tips of her fingers. And sickness rolled through his gut, revulsion and pain that bowed him over, and Lord Zodiark’s voice roared in his head. _A distraction!_

“Hades?” she whispered.

“A distraction,” he said aloud. He looked back up at her, at this figure in the middle of his perfect recreated Amaurot. Who was this woman in front of him? Why had he created an ancient with definition? Forgetfulness pressed at the sides of his consciousness.

Another mistake. The why of it was unimportant.

Emet-Selch scowled and waved his hand, let the woman melt into a Cubus puddle.

Who was that _damned_ adventurer?

**Author's Note:**

> _"Clinch" in the sense of "the memory clinched her identity."_
> 
> Regarding the title, from Wikipedia: _Chroma represents the “purity” of a color (related to saturation), with lower chroma being less pure (more washed out)._


End file.
